Category: Software development
-
Internet of Things (IoT) Project-Project Plan
Start with the End in Mind. Goals Understand the nature of the temperature gradient relative to a heated building with attached enclosed space Notify me when there is a risk of garage stores beverages freezing (and possibly bursting) Notify me when data logging has stopped Reactivate a long dormant project Use Wireless Mesh Network…
-
Infrastructure The silent project plan killer
In theory, you get a piece of software and install it and begin using it. That works maybe 30% of the time. Invariably, you run the install and various messages begin to pop up. Maybe you have a permission problem, maybe there is a pre-requisite that you don’t have, maybe it’s a platform learning curve…
-
Mobile App development with PhoneGap
A few years ago, I had an idea for an App. At the time, I did some research and felt that Appcelerator was the right way to go. I coded the core parts of the system but began to bog down in Graphics, scaling, screen resolution etc. Then other commitments took me away from my…
-
Self-serve Backup Configuration Automation Application
While working for a major financial company, I became the development owner of an application to allow the self configuration of application server backups, There were approximately 20,000 servers in this organization and Petabytes of backups occurring nightly There was a dedicated team of people configuring backups and they were crushed with the load. To…
-
Why I prefer an Agile/Scrum approach to software development
After 30 years of developing software I came to the conclusion years ago that in most cases, an Agile approach to development is superior. The problems with SDLC are several fold. Most are based on deficiencies in the human element… Embarrassment of divulging lack of expertise, the vanity of believing one can know everything in advance,…
-
Stumbled on a Javascript Bug
Wow, This is rare. While writing code, I stumbled on a bug in the language. In my application, I’m using the mod operator (%) and I have used it for decades successfully (although not only in JavaScript). So the thing I’m working on has a circular array so I need to move the index…
-
Replacing a 100 Year old Bond Ticker Tape machine
A major financial organization had a problem. It seems that there was a very minor piece of information that is published in their newspaper on a daily basis and the machine for reading it was ancient. The machine was a ticker tape machine! They needed a replacement as the old machine was dying and ticker…
-
High Performance Outage Tracking Dashboard
This application was for senior managers wanting to monitor the current global status of major incidents… ones significantly impacting a global financial company. It has been my experience that when working with executives, they generally was as little fuss as possible. No user id’s no passwords, at most a URL bookmarked. So this effort was…